"There is a Hole in Your Mind" (B5 Pilot - "The Gathering" '93)

The 1998 re-release title card.  (No, it wasn't cut off on the air.)

February 22, 1993

(Synopsis on The Lurker's Guide)

The problem with analyzing "The Gathering" is that there are actually two different versions of the pilot, the one that aired in 1993 and a re-cut version that aired in 1998 after Babylon 5 moved to TNT for its fifth and final season.

This presents a difficulty for the blog, since on one hand part of the conceit here is to analyze the show as it aired, but on the other hand, it is difficult to find copies of the original '93 version.  The one on my DVD set is '98, while the episodes available for viewing on the WB site don't have either version, starting instead with the first episode from the series proper, "Midnight on the Firing Line".  (Oddly enough, the WB site clearly uses a fifth season image for the series despite only having the first and second seasons available to watch as of this writing.  It makes you wonder sometimes.)

Fortunately the synopsis I've linked to above was written in 1993, so if you read that one you'll get a sense of what was on the air in February.  I'll discuss the '93 version exclusively in this entry, while the next entry covers the '98 re-release and the changes that were made and how the series changed between the pilot and the first season debut a year later.

Right away in this version in particular, a viewer is burdened by massive amounts of exposition.  The show starts with a brief tour of the station for arriving telepath Lyta Alexander, which lets Commander Sinclair ex-posit on the station's physical layout and general mission.  Then we have a meeting of the senior staff where they talk about how secretive the Vorlons are.   And so on and so forth throughout the whole episode.  Just about the only scenes that aren't weighed down by exposition are the brief cutaways to the villain of the piece going about his covert actions.

This isn't all bad, mind you.  Some of the scenes are actually quite effective, especially the ones where things about the characters are revealed alongside the data dumps.  For example, the scene where Londo laments the fall of the Centauri shows how much his people's decline galls him, despite the smiling face he's obligated to put on as his people's ambassador:

"There was a time when this whole quadrant belonged to us! What are we now? Twelve worlds and a thousand monuments to past glories. Living off memories and stories, and selling trinkets. My god, man! We've become a tourist attraction. "See the great Centauri Republic - open 9 to 5 - Earth time."

                                                                                   -Londo Mollari, "The Gathering"

That's the brilliance of Babylon 5, really.  Because Straczynski knew where Londo was going character-wise, he could put clues to his rise and fall in the very first episode.  For all that Babylon 5 spends a lot of time breaking televised science fiction traditions, "The Gathering" spends much of its time playing strictly to type, primarily so that the series itself can break those types over its knee.  Londo, for example, is set up as the semi-serious victim who's pushed around by the Narns, faded in glory, and needs the protection of the powerful Earth Alliance.  By comparison, G'kar is clearly the villain of the piece.  He's a devious schemer who's trying to start a war and is the guy to be watched out for.  And yet by the end of the series, five seasons later, one could say with some honesty that Londo and G'kar had managed to swap roles along the way.

Speaking of G'kar, another example of decent exposition worked into a scene rather than just dumped into the middle of it came in G'kar's confrontation with Delenn.  G'kar's frustration that Delenn won't play ball causes him to yell at her about the conclusion to the Earth-Minbari War.  With that conversation we learn more about the mystery there, without a single human in the room.

Delenn in "The Gathering"

We should talk about the three faces of Delenn, which is appropriate given how important the number three is in Minbari culture.  The original plan was for Delenn to be male throughout the first season then have him become female through the chrysalis.  That plan was abandoned when the techniques for altering Mira Furlan's voice proved to be inadequate.  So the plan was changed to make it so Delenn was a normal hairless Minbari throughout the first season, then have her become half human thereafter.  The problem was that they didn't realize the sound technique sucked until well after they'd shot the pilot.  So Furlan ended up in the distinctly masculine prosthetics throughout the pilot, leading to one of several discrepancies between the pilot and the show proper.

First season Delenn.

So far I've only talked about the alien ambassadors.  The reason for that is because the casualty rate among the human characters was pretty ridiculous.  Indeed, of all the humans in "The Gathering" only Michael Garibaldi makes it to the start of season two.  We'll discuss who left and why in the '98 analysis, but suffice it to say that the three characters who worked the best in the cast were the alien ones.

Delenn as we mostly know her.

So what else can we say about "The Gathering" in 1993?  The story is pretty basic once you get past all the world-building and exposition that's being flung around hither and yon.  Assassin tries to kill the Vorlon, nearly succeeds, frames Commander Sinclair, and nearly gets away with it but the good guys catch him in the end.  

The CG graphics were state of the art for 1993, but are laughable two decades later, especially when viewed in HD.  The show would get better at them later on, but these early efforts are difficult to take seriously now.  Granted, some of the effects are still effective, especially the Vorlon fleet deploying around the station.  But others, such as the close up of the breaching pod on the side of the station are just so obviously computer generated as to be distracting.  

Not that I could tell that when I saw "The Gathering" myself on a cold February night down in Champaign, Illinois, where I was attending college.  Unlike the gathering of friends in a comfortably furnished basement with discounted pizza and a big TV that were there for my first exposure to Deep Space Nine, my first experience watching Babylon 5 was a solitary one.  I was alone in my dorm, watching it on a fuzzy 13' black and white portable TV.  The heating there had never been adequate, so I was bundled up under blankets with the TV in my lap. 

Even with the inadequate viewing conditions, I could tell that there was a lot of potential in that ninety minutes of TV.  There was a lot wrong too, of course, but even then I was TV savvy enough to know that they usually fix things after the pilot.  I was ready, willing, and able to get into watching the show proper next week.  Except I couldn't.  The show wasn't on the air yet, and wouldn't be for another year.  So I gradually forgot about Babylon 5, and when Deep Space Nine came back on in March, I watched it instead.  

So what happened?  What changed from '93 to '94?  Or, for that matter, what got changed between '93 and '98 when "The Gathering" got re-edited and put on the air again?  To find that out, you'll have to come back on Friday for "The Gathering" '98!